Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place

by The Bad Place(Lit)

  "A little dizzy. That's all."

  "What now?" He looked at her.

  "What else? We go on to Santa Barbara.

  El Encanto Heights, bring this thing to an end... somehow." CANDY

  ARRIVED in the archway between a living room and dining room. No one

  was in either place.

  He heard a buzzing sound farther back in the house, and after a moment

  he identified it was an electric razor. It stopped. Then he heard

  water running in a sink, and the drone of a bath room exhaust fan.

  He intended to head straight for the hall and the bath, take the man by

  surprise. But he heard a rustle of paper from the opposite direction.

  He crossed the dining room and stepped into the kitchen doorway. It was

  smaller than the kitchen in his mother's house, but it was as spotlessly

  clean and orderly as his mother's kitchen had not been since her death.

  A woman in a blue dress was sitting at the table, her back to him. She

  was leaning over a magazine, turning the pages one after the other, as

  if looking for something of interest to read.

  Candy possessed a far greater control of his telekinetic talents than

  Frank enjoyed, and in particular could teleport more efficiently and

  swiftly than Frank, creating less air displacement and less noise from

  molecular resistance. Nevertheless he was surprised that she had not

  gotten up to investigate, the sounds he had made during arrival had been

  only one room away from her and, surely, odd enough to prick her!"

  curiosity.

  She turned a few more pages, then leaned forward to where He could not

  see much of her from behind. Her hair thick, lustrous, and so black it

  seemed to have been spun from the same loom as the night. Her shoulders

  and back were muscular. Her legs, which were both to one side of the

  chair crossed at the ankles, were shapely. If he had been a man with

  any interest in sex, he Supposed he would have been excited by the curve

  of her calves.

  Wondering what she looked like-and suddenly overwhelmed by a need to

  know how her blood would taste stepped out of the open doorway and took

  three steps to her. He made no effort to be silent, but she did not

  look up.

  The first she became aware of him was when he seized a handful of her

  hair and dragged her, kicking and flailing, out of the chair.

  He turned her around and was instantly excited by her.

  He was indifferent to her shapely legs, the flare of her hips, trimness

  of her waist, the fullness of her breasts. Though beautiful, it was not

  even her face that electrified him. Something else. A quality in her

  gray eyes. Call it vitality. She was more alive than most people,

  vibrant.

  She did not scream but let out a low grunt of fear or an then struck him

  furiously with both fists. She pounded his chest, battered his face.

  Vitality! Yes, this one was full of life, bursting with life, her

  vitality thrilled him far more than any bounty of sexual charms.

  He could still hear the distant splash of water, the rattle-h of the

  bathroom exhaust fan, and he was confident that he could take her

  without drawing the attention of the man long as he could prevent her

  from screaming. He struck her on the side of the head with his fist,

  hammered her before she could scream. She slumped against him, not

  unconscious dazed.

  Shaking with the anticipation of pleasure, Candy placed her on her back,

  on the table, with her legs trailing over the edge He spread her legs

  and leaned between them, but not to commit rape, nothing as disgusting

  as that. As he lowered his face toward hers, she first blinked at him

  in confusion, still rattlebrained from the blows she had taken. Then

  her eyes began to clear. He saw horrified comprehension return to her,

  and he went quickly for her throat, bit deep, and found the blood, which

  was clean and sweet, intoxicating.

  She thrashed beneath him.

  She was so alive. So wonderfully alive. For a while.

  WHEN THE deliveryman brought the pizza, Lee Chen took it into Bobby and

  Julie's office and offered some to Hal.

  Putting his book aside but not taking his stockinged feet off the coffee

  table, Hal said,

  "You know what that stuff does to your arteries?" :'Why's everyone so

  concerned about my arteries today?"

  'You're such a nice young man. We'd hate to see you dead before you're

  thirty. Besides, we'd always wonder what clothes you might've worn

  next, if you'd lived."

  "Not anything like what you're wearing, I assure you." Hal leaned over

  and looked in the box that Lee held down to him.

  "Looks pretty good. Rule of thumb-any pizza they'll bring to you,

  they're selling service instead of good food. But this doesn't look bad

  at all, you can actually tell where the pizza ends and the cardboard

  begins." Lee tore the lid off the box, put it on the coffee table, and

  put two slices of pizza on that makeshift plate.

  "There."

  "You're not going to give me half',."

  "What about the cholesterol?"

  "Hell, cholesterol's just a little animal fat, it isn't arsenic." WHEN

  THE woman's strong heart stopped beating, Candy pulled back from her.

  Though blood still seeped from her ravaged throat, he did not touch

  another drop of it. The thought of drinking from a corpse sickened him.

  He remembered his sisters' cats, eating their own each time one of the

  pack died, and he grimaced.

  Even as he raised his wet lips from her throat, he heard the door open

  farther back in the house. Footsteps approached. Candy quickly circled

  the table, putting it and the woman between himself and the doorway to

  the dining room From the vision induced by the dummy's scrapbook of

  pictures, Candy knew that Clint would not be as easy to kill as most

  people were. He preferred to put a little distance between them, give

  himself time to size up his opponent rather than take the guy by

  surprise.

  Clint appeared in the doorway. Except for his outfit slacks, navy-blue

  blazer, maroon V-neck, white shirt looked the same as the psychic

  impression he had left on the book. He had pumped a lot of iron in his

  time. His hair thick, black, and combed straight back from his

  forehead.

  He had a face like carved granite, and a hard look in his eyes Excited

  by the recent kill, by the taste of blood still in his mouth, Candy

  watched the man with interest, wondering what would happen next. There

  were all sorts of ways it could and not one of them would be dull.

  Clint did not react as Candy expected. He did not show surprise when he

  saw the woman sprawled dead upon the table he did not seem horrified,

  shattered by the loss of her, or raged. Something major changed in his

  stony face, though below the surface, like tectonic plates shifting

  under the earth's crust.

  Finally he met Candy's gaze, and said,

  "You." The note of recognition in that single word was unsettling For a

  moment. Candy could think of no way this man could know him-then he

  remembered Thomas.

  The possibility that Thomas had told this man-and perhaps others-about<
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  Candy was most frightening to Candy since his mother's death. His

  service in God's army of avengers was a deeply private matter, a secret

  should not have been spread beyond the Pollard family.

  mother had warned him that it was all right to be proud doing God's

  work, but that his pride would lead him to a if he boasted of his divine

  favor to others.

  "Satan," she told him, "constantly seeks the names of lieutenants in

  Garrny-which is what you are-and when he finds them, destroys them with

  worms that eat them alive from wit worms fat as snakes, and he rains

  fire on them too. If you can't keep the secret, you'll die and go to

  Hell for your big mouth."

  "Candy," Clint said.

  The use of his name erased whatever doubt remained that the secret had

  been passed outside the family and that Candy was in deep trouble,

  though he had not broken the code of silence himself.

  He imagined that even now Satan, in some dark and steaming place, had

  tilted his head and said,

  "Who? Who did you say? What was his name? Candy? Candy who?" As

  furious as he was frightened, Candy started around the kitchen table,

  wondering if Clint had learned about him from Thomas. He was determined

  to break the man, make him talk before killing him.

  In a move as unexpected as his rock-calm acceptance of the woman's

  murder, Clint reached inside his jacket, withdrew a revolver, and fired

  two shots.

  He might have fired more than two, but those were the only ones Candy

  heard. The first round hit him in the stomach, the second in the chest,

  pitching him backward. Fortunately he sustained no damage to his head

  or heart. If his brain tissue had been scrambled, disturbing the

  mysterious and fragile connection between brain and mind, leaving his

  mind trapped within his ruined brain before he had a chance to separate

  the two, he would not have possessed the mental ability to teleport,

  leaving him vulnerable to a coup de grace. And if his heart had been

  stopped instantaneously by a well-placed bullet, before he could

  dematerialize, he would have fallen down dead where he'd stood. Those

  were the only wounds that might finish him. He was many things, but he

  was not immortal; so he was grateful to God for letting him get out of

  that kitchen and back to his mother's house alive.

  THE VENTURA FREEWAY. Julie drove fast, though not as fast as she had

  earlier. On the tapedeck: Artie Shaw's "Night mare." Bobby brooded,

  staring through the side window at the nightscape. He could not stop

  thinking about the blare of words that had seared through him, loud as a

  bomb blast and bright as a blast-furnace fire. He had come to terms

  with the dream that had frightened him last week; everyone had bad

  dreams. Though exceptionally vivid, almost more real than real life,

  there had been nothing uncanny about it-or so he had convinced himself.

  But this was different. He could believe that these urgent, lava-hot

  words had erupted from some subconscious. A dream, with complex

  Freudian message couched in elaborate scenes and symbols-yes, that was

  understandable; after all, the subconscious dealt in euphemisms a

  metaphors. But this wordburst had been blunt, direct, like telegraph

  delivered on a wire plugged directly into his cerebral cortex.

  When he wasn't brooding, Bobby was fidgeting. Because Thomas. For some

  reason, the longer he dwelt on the blaze of words the more Thomas

  slipped into his thoughts. He could see connection between the two, so

  he tried to put Thomas out of his mind and concentrate on turning up an

  explanation for thee experience. But Thomas gently, insistently

  returned, again and again. After a while Bobby got the uneasy feeling

  there was a link between the wordburst and Thomas, though he had no

  ghost of an idea what it might be.

  Worse, as the miles rolled up on the odometer and they reached the

  western end of the valley, Bobby began to understand that Thomas was in

  danger. And because of me and Julie Bobby thought.

  Danger from whom, from what?

  The biggest danger that Bobby and Julie faced, right now was Candy

  Pollard. But even that jeopardy lay in the future for Candy didn't know

  about them yet; he was not aware that they were working on Frank's

  behalf, and he might never become aware of it, depending on how things

  went in Santa Barbara and El Encanto Heights. Yes, he had seen Bobby on

  the beach at Punaluu, with Frank, but he had no way of knowing who Bobby

  was. Ultimately, even if Candy became aware Dakota & Dakota's

  association with Frank, there was no way that Thomas could be drawn into

  the affair; Thomas was other, separate part of their lives. Right?

  "Something wrong?" Julie said as she pulled the Toyota to the left, to

  pass a big rig hauling Coors.

  He could see nothing to be gained by telling her that Thomas might be in

  danger. She would be upset, worried. And for what? He was just

  letting his vivid imagination run away with him. Thomas was perfectly

  safe down there in Cielo Vista.

  "Bobby, what's wrong?"

  "Nothing."

  "Why're you fidgeting?"

  "Prostate trouble."

  CHANNEL No. 5, a softly glowing lamp, cozy rose-patterned fabrics and

  wallpaper...

  He laughed with relief when he materialized in the bedroom, the bullets

  left behind in that kitchen in Placentia, over a hundred miles away. His

  wounds had knitted up as if they had never existed. He had lost perhaps

  an ounce of blood and a few flecks of tissue, because one of the bullets

  had passed through him and out his back, carrying that material with it

  before he'd transported himself beyond the revolver's range. Everything

  else was as it should be, however, and his flesh did not harbor even the

  memory of pain.

  He stood in front of the dresser for half a minute, breathing deeply of

  the perfume that wafted up from the saturated handkerchief. The scent

  gave him courage and reminded him of the abiding need to make them pay

  for his mother's murder, all of them, not just Frank but the whole

  world, which had conspired against her.

  He looked at his face in the mirror. The gray-eyed woman's blood was no

  longer on his chin and lips; he had left it behind him, as he might

  leave water behind when teleporting out of a rainstorm. But the taste

  of it was still in his mouth. And his reflection was without a doubt

  that of vengeance personified.

  Depending on the element of surprise and his ability to target his point

  of arrival precisely now that he was familiar with the kitchen, he

  returned to Clint's house. He intended to enter at the dining-room

  doorway, immediately behind the man, directly opposite the point from

  which he had dematerialized.

  Either the experience of being shot had shaken him more than he

  realized, or the rage jittering through him had passed the critical

  point at which it interfered with his concentration. Whatever the

  reason, he did not arrive where he intended, but by the door to the

  garage, one-quarter instead of halfway around the room from his last
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  position, to the right of Clint and not near enough to rush him and

  seize the gun before it could be fired.

  Except Clint was not present. And the woman's body had been removed

  from the table. Only the blood remained as proof that she perished

  there.

  Candy could not have been gone more than a minute-time he had spent in

  his mother's room, plus a couple of seconds in transit each way. He

  expected to return to find Clint bent over the corpse, either grieving

  or checking desperately for a pulse. But as soon as he realized Candy

  was gone, the man must have taken the body in his arms and... And who

  He must have fled the house, of course, hoping against hope that a faint

  thread of life remained unbroken in the worn getting her out of the way

  in case Candy returned.

  Cursing softly-then immediately begging his mother's and God's

  forgiveness for his foul language-Candy tried the door into the garage.

  It was locked. If he had left by that exit, Clint wouldn't have paused

  to lock up behind himself.

  He hurried out of the kitchen, through the dining room,ward the foyer of

  the living room, to check out the front lawn and the street. But he

  heard a noise from deeper in the house and halted before he reached the

  front door. He changed direction, cautiously following the hallway back

  to the bedroom A light was on in one of those rooms. He eased to the

  door and risked a glance inside.

  Clint had just put the woman on the queen-size bed. Candy watched, the

  man pulled her skirt down over her legs. He still had the revolver in